Through seminars, studio sessions and group crits, students are expected to make a body of works that add to portrait painting’s long history, witnessing an increased criticality towards its practical and conceptual possibilities today.
The course revolves around the notion of ‘painting as flesh’ to explore the human face via a series of major issues, including age and time, the self and the other, the portrait as a mask. Reflecting and expanding on portraiture’s traditional methods and meanings, students are therefore encouraged to find their individual voice within portrait’s current concerns. Issues of identity, social status, otherness, are presented during lectures and discussions that serve as a conceptual framework to inform and contextualize studio sessions, assignments and individual research. Practical demonstrations and one-to-one tutorials on such formal aspects as anatomy and texture are given to allow students to gain mastery of portrait’s basics. Visits to museums are fundamental moments to look at paintings in the flesh and acquire the necessary skills to observe and evaluate their works. Students mainly work from observation, except for specific assignments, and are expected to set an independent agenda and studio routine.
Honours students are expected to produce a series of portraits thought of as a solo exhibition project. The exhibition project will be presented with a title and accompanied by an artist's text in which the work is critically contextualized within current painting debates.
Readings and Books
Readings and extracts from books and catalogues will be provide throughout. Essential bibliography:
Faigin, G., The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression, New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2008
Hyman, Timothy, The World New Made, Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century, London: Thames&Hudson, 2022
MacGibbon, Rab et al, Icons and Identities, London: NPG, 2020
Mullins, Charlotte, Painting People, London: Thames&Hudson 2007
West, Shearer, Portraiture, Oxford: University Press, 2004